A&E legacy should be a new contract

WRITING on this page on Saturday, A&E critic Deputy Mike Hadley expressed a desire to draw a line under his corporate roughing up and said that being reprimanded was worth it for having highlighted issues at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital.

For islanders, however, a better legacy would be the main players sitting down and resolving the problems that Health and Social Services and PCCL, the GPs' money-making machine, have so energetically tried to hush-up and play down.

Thanks to Deputy Hadley, we now know that the emergency and out-of-hours cover requires improvement and is provided at quite extraordinary cost to the patient. In effect, PCCL is profiting mightily while using taxpayer-provided facilities free of charge.

It is also telling that as recently as Friday, the directors of PCCL were again refusing to be interviewed on this topic, doubtless because they don't like the expected questions and have no adequate answers to them.

In these circumstances, Health – or since the department has become an apologist for PCCL – the Policy Council, should be sitting down with the media-shy GPs and telling them that the game's up.

Instead of hiding behind a contract with a few years to go, it should be renegotiated with a view to resolving the issues identified by a College of Emergency Medicine and stripping out the excessive costs factored in by the GPs.

That way, the doctors controlling the A&E franchise could set an example and regain some credibility by acknowledging that what was initially negotiated no longer meets the island's needs.

Will it happen? Not if left to HSSD, a department that has a distressing track record of budget failures and, as evidenced by cancelled operations and closed wards, putting patients second.

And what Health and ministers should remember is that the Assembly is largely behind Deputy Hadley.

Yes, the reprimand vote was 26-19 in favour. But take out the 11 from the Policy Council, which instigated the action, and a majority of open-minded members voted against a reprimand.

If ministers won't tackle A&E, they are inviting back benchers to do it for them.